Film Review: Inner Demons

Carson (Lara Vosburgh), the teenage daughter of a deeply religious family, begins using heroin to suppress the evil growing inside of her. Her family, noticing the major changes happening in their honor student daughter, agrees to be part of an intervention style reality show in order to get her help. In rehab, without the drugs to keep the evil at bay, Carson is overcome with a demon force that puts everyone around her in mortal danger.

Inner Demons could easily pass for an episode of Intervention. I have seen enough episodes to recognize all of the important elements. The interviews with the parents are the best parts. There is the mother who punishes herself for the problems of her daughter and the father with anger and past alcohol issues who enables the daughter out of guilt. They have the shots of Carson using heroin in the bathroom, in alleyways with other teenagers and in her bedroom, all under the guise that she is part of a study on heroin users. They even have the pre-intervention meeting with the therapist before Carson is lead into the house for the surprise.

Courtesy of IFC Midnight

After the intervention, Carson agrees to get help. Once in rehab, away from the drugs they all thought were ruining her life, Carson only gets worse. The filmmakers and others in the rehab facility think Carson is crazy for believing she is possessed by a demon with only one person, a camera man named Jason (Morgan McClellan), who thinks she is genuine. Carson and Jason have to find a way to get rid of the demon before it is able to take over completely.

Vosburgh, in her first movie role, is excellent as Carson. She brings a vulnerable strength to the role necessary for believability. I would not be surprised to see her in more lead roles in the future.

I went to high school with a girl that was on Intervention. She, too, was a heroin user. It was strange seeing this film because it was almost like watching that episode. I don’t want to use her name but she was amongst the top students in our class and, by college, was using heavy drugs. There was a total transformation from the girl I knew in school to the woman I saw on the television. The truth is that she had her own inner demons that she was trying to suppress with the drugs. Now no, they weren’t literal demons but that is what makes Inner Demons so clever. How are we to know that anyone’s demons aren’t real? They surely feel real to the person inflicted.

Courtesy of IFC Midnight

It is refreshing to see that a low budget film can create something that high budgets and Hollywood cannot seem to and that is originality. These are the films that should be making all of the money, not those horrible butchered remakes that Hollywood keeps pumping out. Given that they were able to effectively Seth Grossman and Glenn Gers, the director and writer of Inner Demons respectively, are given the opportunity to create more films

Inner Demons is now available on DVD from IFC Midnight.

=========================================================================================================Ann Ann Hale is the horror editor for Pop-Break.com and a senior contributing writer, reviewing horror movies and television shows. She is also the American Correspondent for Lovehorror.co.uk and writer for Geekandstuff.com. Ann attended East Carolina University, majoring in English Literature. She is a collector of Halloween (the film) memorabilia and is a self-admitted opinionated horror nerd. You can follow her, her collection and her cat, Edward Kittyhands on Twitter and Instagram @Scarletjupiter ====================================================================================